Friday, September 14, 2007

Since our media endlessly spew tiny numbers of Iraqis killed since we trashed their country, it is good to find in the Los Angeles Times that a British outfit has made a serious effort to discover what our military hopes to sweep under the rug.

The figure from ORB, a British polling agency that has conducted several surveys in Iraq, followed statements this week from the U.S. military defending itself against accusations it was trying to play down Iraqi deaths to make its strategy appear successful. ...

According to the ORB poll, a survey of 1,461 adults suggested that the total number slain during more than four years of war was more than 1.2 million.

ORB said it drew its conclusion from responses to the question about those living under one roof: "How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003?"

Based on Iraq's estimated number of households -- 4,050,597 -- it said the 1.2 million figure was reasonable. ...

ORB said its poll had a margin of error of 2.4 percent. According to its findings, nearly one in two households in Baghdad had lost at least one member to war- related violence, and 22 percent of households nationwide had suffered at least one death. It said 48 percent of the victims were shot to death and 20 percent died as a result of car bombs, with other explosions and military bombardments blamed for most of the other fatalities.

The U.S. Census estimates [pdf] that there are roughly 115 million households in the United States. Now those households probably contain a lot less persons than Iraqi households. Let's pretend to correct for that difference by estimating that the U.S. has roughly 57 million Iraqi-size households. If 22 percent of those U.S. households had suffered a death from invasion- and occupation-related violence, 12.5 million of us would be dead. Just to put what we've done in some context.

Nobody can produce exact numbers, but this British survey suggests that, if anything, the counter displayed at the top of this blog is a conservative estimate of the carnage!

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What is this blog for?

This San Francisco purveyor of graffiti has it right. When times are bleak -- when country and planet sink under the barely restrained sway of greed, raw power, and fear -- it's time to restate what matters.

I write here to preserve and kindle hope for a national and global turn toward multi-racial, economically egalitarian, gender non-constricting, woman affirming, and peace choosing democracy that preserves the habitability of earth for all. There's a big order -- but what else is there to do but struggle for this? Not much.

Topics range from the minuscule to the transcendent to the global, from dire to delightful. I am not an optimist, but I refuse to allow myself to wallow within the easy bias that everything is going to always be awful. Good also happens; love lives too.

I've been yammering here about activism, politics, history, racism and other occasional horrors and pleasures since 2005. I intend to continue as long as the opportunity exists. In this time, that means activism and chronicling resistance. Perhaps it always has, one way and another.

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I'm a progressive political activist who runs trails and climbs mountains whenever any are available. I've had the privilege to work for justice in Central America (Nicaragua and El Salvador), in South Africa, in the fields of California with the United Farmworkers Union, and in the cities and schools of my own country. I'm a Christian of the Episcopalian flavor; we think and argue a lot. For work, I've done a bit of it all: run an old fashioned switch-board; remodeled buildings and poured concrete; edited and published periodicals, reports and books; and organized for electoral campaigns. Will work for justice.